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Answer 1

+1 A:

You can try turning it off in the web.config.

<httpRuntime enable = "False"/>

leppie 2008-09-19 10:08:27

Answer 2

+1 A:

You could probably do it by writing your own HTTP Handler (a .NET component that implements the System.Web.IHttpHandler interface).

There's a good primer article here: link text

jules 2008-09-19 10:17:31

That won't work, right? Because this technique doesn't even let the App Domain load, so I am thinking that the HTTP Handler will never get called.

Vaibhav 2008-09-19 10:24:56

Answer 3

+5 A:

The handling of app_offline.htm is hardcoded in the ASP.NET pipeline, and can't be modified: see CheckApplicationEnabled() in HttpRuntime.cs, where it throws a very non-configurable 404 error if the application is deemed to be offline.

However, creating your own HTTP module to do something similar is of course trivial -- the OnBeginRequest handler could look as follows in this case (implementation for a HttpHandler shown, but in a HttpModule the idea is exactly the same):

Public Sub ProcessRequest(ByVal ctx As System.Web.HttpContext) Implements IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest
    If IO.File.Exists(ctx.Server.MapPath("/app_unavailable.htm")) Then
        ctx.Response.Status = "503 Unavailable (in Maintenance Mode)"
        ctx.Response.Write(String.Format("<html><h1>{0}</h1></html>", ctx.Response.Status))
        ctx.Response.End()
    End If
End Sub

This is just a starting point, of course: by making the returned HTML a bit friendlier, you can display a nice "we'll be right back" page to your users as well.

mdb 2008-09-19 10:17:53

That, I guess, is what I was hoping is not the case. I think I read in a Scott Gu article that there are events exposed by the pipeline for something like this. Now, I wonder if it really is hard coded.

Vaibhav 2008-09-19 10:26:18

Yeah, it's definitely hardcoded. I've updated my answer to include the function name and source file in the ASP.NET reference source that shows that quite clearly...

mdb 2008-09-19 11:48:55

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